Developing and Communicating Ideas

Ideation is an interesting thing. Where do stories come from? Where do the ideas come from? How do you ignite passion for those? How do you get other people on board with your storytelling? 

For me, I think, that the first answer is very simple. 

You read a lot of books, you watch a lot of TV, you go to movies, and you read way too many comic books and play video games. It is really sort of the tried and true storytelling mechanism. 

Good stories are good stories. It does not matter how they're told. 

You can be around a great storyteller who is just classically great at telling a great joke and you can be enraptured in every single syllable that they say.

So, to me, where does that come from? 

It really just comes from loving stories, and that is really the core of it. 

In terms of where do we get our own ideas or where do my ideas come from, it is really from both the things that I've seen and that I've loved, that I've consumed. And also very personal things for myself in terms of growing up. 

The best content makers out there are putting up stories that are relatable. Period. First and foremost, stories has to be relatable to yourself and if it is relatable yourself, I guarantee you that it is relatable to other people out there. 

Now, you might have a more niche group or you might have a really broad group, and there's a lot of levels in between of different types of storytelling to reach different types of audience. 

But, if you want to make something that is truly great, you need to be passionate about it. And if you're going to be passionate about it, it has to be real. It has to be meaningful to you first - and that's how it's going to be meaningful to others. 

So where do ideas come from? It is actually more about opening up your mind to know yourself and to know the universe. To speak more practically about how one work in general.

Ideas never come from sitting in front of a computer. They come from everything else. And also, there is another thing. Steve Jobs was good about saying this actually, that none of his ideas came from himself. It's just about being curious and steeping yourself in a richer state of life. 

And so that is where my ideas came from. It is like you are daydreaming, you are walking, and you think would you combine this and this. It is generally the combination of things that have not been combined before. It is this floor that you walk on where it draws lines between all the people. 

When I work on an interactive media project, I always start with pictures. I always start by drawing things. And I might draw an interface, I might draw a diagram, I might try to draw flow charts, I might try to draw a storyboard, which shows a linear sequence of what is clearly not going to be a linear experience. 

None of those are perfect, but they all invite other people in. 

And so, they are the beginning of a collaboration. They are the starting point for any collaboration. I could take all afternoon to describe to you images I've got in my head but you still won't get it because words don't do it justice and hearing isn't really a great medium for that kind of visual representation. But if I pick up a pencil and draw or even if I tear photographs out of a magazine or sketch stick figures, it doesn't really matter how high fidelity the drawing is. 

The simple thing is that there is a piece of paper between two people or three people, or a whole team. And everyone can point to that picture and refer to it and then dialogue around that. 

The best ideas can be executed on a piece of paper. The best ideas can be executed in the simplest environment. And it is much better to do it that way. 

Too often we're drawn to the final product, and people want to race to the final outcome. They want to get into some kind of interactive software, they want to start coding right away, they want to start designing screens, they want to make the final UI. 

The problem is that they are leaping past a whole set of initial discussions that need to occur, and that actually could be a very expensive way to produce. 

So it seems like you are making progress if you rush straight to the computer screen and start rendering something because you're like - look we're making pictures - this is great, high fidelity pictures. The problem is if you haven't solved those fundamental issues. What is the story we are trying to tell? 

What is the engagement model? How do people respond to it? Where are they clicking? What are they touching? Are they clicking at all? Maybe they're responding some other way. 

If you haven't discussed those issues then it really doesn't matter that you've rendered a bunch of pictures. You're probably going to end up throwing that stuff out. 

So this is a great skill for anyone starting out in their career is the ability to draw pictures no matter how rudimentary or even unrealistic. Because - it draws people together and it gives someone a chance. It gives them a platform to stand on the pitch and the idea.

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